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SUMMARY:To the letter: Children’s developing trust in the written word -
  Shiri Einav\,  Lecturer  Faculty of Science \, University of Nottingham
DTSTART:20150210T163000Z
DTEND:20150210T180000Z
UID:TALK57384@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Ann Waterman
DESCRIPTION:Children have many opportunities to learn about the world thro
 ugh the testimony of others. As well as spoken claims\, they are constantl
 y exposed to the written word and to people obtaining information from wri
 tten materials. Yet\, little is known about children’s awareness of the 
 knowledge-providing potential of text\, or their assumptions about its rel
 iability as a source for learning. In this talk\, I will present a series 
 of studies that begin to address these questions while examining whether t
 rust in text relates to the child’s ability to decode this medium for th
 emselves. The work compares 3–6 year-olds’ trust in what is said versu
 s what is read when (i) learning names for novel referents\; (ii) interact
 ing with a novel apparatus\, and (iii) receiving unexpected information th
 at conflicts with their prior knowledge. Consistently\, the findings show 
 that when children have a basic ability to decode text\, but not before\, 
 they regard the written word as a particularly authoritative source of inf
 ormation. The clear developmental change between pre- and early readers su
 ggests that children’s first-hand experience of extracting meaning from 
 print underlies their trust in this medium.\n\n
LOCATION:Faculty of Education\, 184 Hills Road\, Cambridge\, CB2 8PQ\, (Rm
  GS1)\, Donald McIntyre Building)
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